Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
There are a number of links out there to this sites previous content pages which were apparently built with a very bad CMS.(ugly URLS) I'm considering 301 redirecting those URLS to the pages within my current site structure which are very relevant to the previous links. I'm wondering if there's any reason this'll hurt or harm my website with Google specifically. Any experience or thoughts on this matter?
Is this black, grey, or white hat? What are the likely risks/rewards?
[edited by: Asia_Expat at 10:31 am (utc) on April 30, 2008]
Is this black, grey, or white hat?
It's called 'business as we know it'. You're buying up the space of a relevant service to open something in its place that'd please those who were allright with the previous site.
If tomorrow the deli on the corner closed down because of whatever reasons, left empty for half a year, then someone else opened a buffet in its place because the corner is frequented by hungry people ( who also remember they could grab some food on the way )... some might even be thankful.
many domain names redirect to the company that acquired them.
among them, many are fortune 500 companies.
in fact I'd think the 'buying out your competitor' or 'takaing competitor's place' is more of a trend among Google's biggest allies than your everyday webmaster.
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On the other hand I have some data on the mechanics of these things - a byproduct of some other tests.
Depending on *which* domain parking lot it was and how much the domain spent sitting there... sometimes Google won't stop at reseting trust, it'll even blacklist the domain because of showing the kind of MFA domain parking pages are.
Not with every kind of parking and depending on how long the domain showed the 'ads'. I'm not going into a comparative analysis on whose ads guarantee a penalty free domain in whose search engine. *grin*
also, in response to the OP: it works, but I'd make tripple sure that the ugly URLs aren't the leftovers of an afterparty of an MFA that tried to cash in on the domain. I've seen this before: domain has good links, gets dropped by unaware webmaster, MFA picks it up, is just as dilettant, puts up a crappy ad-directory and pollutes the index with ugly URLs. On some sites these 'new generation' pages get mixed up with the 'original' URLs. If you're lucky, you've just saved the domain from being penalized... so act quick.
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If the domain gets penalized it usually takes anything from 3 months to a year for it to get out, depending on just how good its links were. A reconsideration request ( that you've just bought the domain, which should be obvious ) might speed things up. It's completely legit. If you're not sure about the origin of the problem, check the wayback machine, or query the domain in Google.
in either case, if the site changed DNS (to parking lot), your trust is 0.00 at best.
it'll build up along the lines of the links that remained in place + the links you build, but keep the site relevant to its link profile. If the domain wasn't penalized, this'd happen fairly quickly. You'll see some pretty extreme jumps in your rankings over the first few weeks/months, but usually site ends up at where it was - in terms of trust.
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